Confusion over new rules regarding marriage in the Church of England has meant that Prince William has been left out in the cold and Prince Harry will marry Kate Middleton in the forthcoming Royal Wedding.

In a major crackdown on the increase in sham marriages taking place in churches around UK, the General Synod has decided to replace the “reading of the banns” with a new system based on the Alternative Vote System. It is called the Alternative Vows System, and is voted for by the congregation.

Supporters of the new scheme claim that it is the fairest way to work out who should and should not be allowed to get married in church and that anyone who looks suspicious or "a bit foreign" can be vetoed.

The Right Reverend Terry McManus, Bishop of Milton Keynes, told our reporter, “AV is very much like the reading of the banns, but fairer. Like the previous system, it is used to announce the marriage of two people, except that rather than simply allowing the bride and groom to marry, the congregation gets to choose by ranking the wedding party in order of their own, personal preference.

The church goer puts a '1' by their first choices of bride and groom, and can continue, if they wish, to put a '2' by their second choices, and so on, until they run out of names. If two of them receive a majority of first choice votes, then they can be married. If no candidates gain a majority the first time around, then the second choice votes of those who finished last on the first count are shared among the others. This process is repeated until two of them get over 50 per cent of the vote.”

It seems that the congregation at St Paul's Cathedral had misunderstood the complexity of the system and subsequently voted Harry in as groom, the Duke of Edinburgh as Best Man and Sarah Ferguson as Chief Bridesmaid. Her Majesty the Queen is to be the organist and William, an usher, it has been revealed.

A friend of Prince William told us he is “gutted about the whole sorry affair” but then added, “looking on the bright side, though, if you look at past royal weddings, the chances are it would all have been over in a couple of years anyway.”